Welcome to Republican dis. Ar. Ray. Which seems to be par for the course this election season.

Jon Ralston is reporting that the RNC and Team Romney have had it with the “inept and self-destructive” Nevada GOP, so they’re putting together a “shadow state party” there.

One Nevada group even asked the very-bad-at-his-job RNC chair and bigot, Reince Priebus, to resign. So poor, chastised Reince teamed up with Willard’s campaign to nuh-UH the critics and show what a big, strong leader he could be.

“The goal is for us to be running get out the vote, running phone programs, voter ID, voter contact, everything through the Team Nevada headquarters,” the strategist told me. That is, everything the party is supposed to do, except the GOP here can’t raise money and has the inmates running the asylum.

He continued: “The RNC has said it is willing to do everything possible as the state party appears not to be willing to work with us, so we will do it without them.”

The plan would be to transfer money directly to Team Nevada and/or funnel some through the Washoe Republican Party, run by the respected Dave Buell, who is well-liked by the RNC and Romney folks.

1. Well, somebody’s gotta be well-liked, because the candidate sure isn’t.

2. Key words: Voter ID.

3. Embarrass yourselves much?

NO!

Via the New York Times:

[T]he 43rd president is beginning to add his voice back into the national dialogue. A month ago, he spoke publicly in favor of one of his defining domestic legacies, the tax cuts that still divide the country. Two months from now, he plans to publish a book outlining strategies for economic growth. And on Tuesday, he made a rare return to Washington to promote freedom overseas.

Um, George?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(click on images to enlarge)

As Think Progress notes,”it’s not just under Bush that the nation saw lackluster economic growth. Over the last 50 years, in fact, two-thirds of the private sector jobs created in the country have come under Democratic administrations.”

Book schmook… from a schnook of a crook.

Ta da!!! Teh crazies have finally caught their tail and have no clue what to do with it now. Frackin’ idjits. Via MM

Wow, talk about news as it happens!

Thud.

“We just got hit by a car… sorry…uchh! I’m gonna have to goodbye, say goodbye. We just got hit by a car… Everybody’s fine … but it’s gonna be a bit of a struggle.”

Thankfully, nobody was hurt. Let’s hope nobody “feels it” tomorrow.

Audio here.

(And yes, I’m thrilled to pieces to be able to post that photo again, why?)

Here we go again, like the proverbial broken record. It’s James O’Keefe time! To repeat:

Wannabe Jimmy Olsen’s team of self-righteous idiots tried to pull off a sting by using the names of (supposedly) deceased voters to prove (non-existent) voter fraud at the polls.  Which triggered an investigation. They could face criminal charges for posing as these people in order to get ballots using false names.

So he failed at proving voter fraud, but he succeeded in committing voter fraud.

See, James O’Keefe’s “voter fraud” sting had a glitch: Confusing a 23-year-old for a dead 84-year-old.

Now there’s been another. Glitch, that is.

O’Keefe YouTubed this video (an excerpt showing the attempted ambush of one of Little Jimmy’s targets, William Romero, is in the video at the top of the post). Think Progress is reporting that not one, but two “non-citizens” are actually citizens.

Oops to the Nth degree.

In fact, William Romero’s family said he became a naturalized citizen well over a year ago.

What’s more, Romero’s family told ThinkProgress that they had began receiving harassing telephone calls two weeks before the incident in the video asking if Romero was a citizen. They confirmed to the caller — it’s unclear whether they were speaking with O’Keefe himself or another individual — that Romero is indeed a citizen. Nevertheless, O’Keefe proceeded to ambush the family at their home and publish this video claiming he’s not a citizen.

One member of his family, who was confronted in O’Keefe’s video as he came home to care for his sick son, was incensed by the charge, calling it “completely absurd.”

O’Keefe is an outright liar trying to pass himself off as a real live journalist. And an adult. He continues to fail miserably at both.

P.S. Icing on the cake:  James O’Keefe Injunction To Get Back Emails: DENIED.

Huckabee

Via Buzzfeed, above is a rather jaw-dropping fundraising letter from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. And what a letter it is!

It informs readers of the formation of “Obama Fundraising Watch” which will “pour through” the president’s Federal Election Commission filings to “derail the Obama agenda once and for all.”

Note to Huck: It’s “pore”, not “pour.”

“…President Obama has surrounded himself with morally repugnant political whores with misshapen values and gutter-level ethics.” Oooo, the person of faith said, “whore.”

“Thank goodness” for Citizens United and David Bossie, says the very misguided and morally repugnant Huckilliterate, who sides with corporate people over the 99%.

Wowee, he sure doesn’t sound like the holier-than-thou family values guy he pretends to be!

Then again, how seriously can you take someone who says, “I’m not buying that malarkey for a second!” Malarkey? And he calls Team Obama “old school.”

Earlier today I posted Rep. Jackie Speier: “Facts don’t mean anything. That’s what’s so disturbing.” In that post, I link to a video from The Rachel Maddow Show that provides a rundown of lie after lie told by Willard Romney. Since then, of course, there have been others.

And then he avoids the press.

As Rep. Speier notes, facts are irrelevant to the GOP. They make stuff up, state it as fact, their statements get reported, quoted, and as they make their way through the news cycle, become headlines. Self-perpetuated hype and fabrication weave their way into the news as if they’re real stories… backed up by absolutely nothing.

Or as I like to call it, Fox “News” [sic].

Unfortunately, other networks run with these lies, too, and that’s why poll after poll reflect support for liars like Romney, or Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Misinformed voters believe what they’re told without bothering to fact check.

It looks like Greg Sargent is picking up where Speier left off with his “How Mitt Romney gets away with his lying”. Please read the entire post. Here are a couple of pertinent points:

The Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams summed it up perfectly in a quote to me:

“The bottom line is that whatever baseline you use, until Romney makes good on his promise to pay for his tax cuts, he would increase the deficit far more than Obama would.”

On the second point, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has determined that the policies put in place under Bush are the main driver of the deficits that are projected over the next decade.

… Yet the vast majority of news consumers who now know that Romney has accused Obama of lighting a “prairie fire of debt” that threatens to engulf our children and our future haven’t been told about either of them.

Former President Bill Clinton addresses this (at about 15:00), including the outlook for the U.S. economy, entitlement reform, tax policy and deficit reduction at a Fiscal Summit event sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (Source: Bloomberg):

Remember this from the other day?

“’I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News Tuesday morning “as the doors of an elevator closed on him.”

Boy howdy, that was some enthusiastic, weighty endorsement, wasn’t it? Of course, Willard probably couldn’t WAIT to tout that one all over the airwaves, because a thumbs up from a former president is really something to crow about!

Then again, Willard must have taken Press Avoidance 101 from Sarah Palin, Avoider in Chief. Or was that Sharron Angle? They tend to run together, all them crazed GOPeeps. But I digress.

St. Petersburg, Florida (CNN) – The day after former President George W. Bush gave him an impromptu endorsement, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney pointedly avoided naming his new supporter in a Wednesday speech.

Instead, Romney referred to Bush five times as a “predecessor” to President Barack Obama.

What? No Bush boasting? Gee, I can’t imagine why.

St. Petersburg, Florida (CNN) – Press aides for the Romney campaign and a lone Secret Service agent attempted to physically block reporters from asking questions of the GOP contender along an event rope line in Saint Petersburg, Florida on Wednesday.

The brief altercation was captured on video by CNN. A spokeswoman from the Romney campaign later called it “an error.”

Not only does Mitt turn audiences off with his personality, he turns reporters off at public events… literally. That’s what happens when you’re a candidate who can’t answer questions directly and who has no specific remedies for all those specific problems he likes to specifically bring up at every turn.

Here’s the video:

On the Stephanie Miller Show today, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) called in to discuss Willard M. Romney’s accusations that President Obama is a horrible, terrible, no good chief executive because it is he, King Barack, who is solely responsible for our 5 trillion dollar debt increase (wrong):

DAVID GREGORY:
I want to ask you one other question about the broader economy and what sort of holds us back. And a lot of people I talked to, asked to me what’s the most basic question, which is, “What role does the debt really play?” Because here’s the fact about the debt under this administration and the prior administration. If you go back– the debt increase for the tol– total Bush presidency was about $5 trillion, which is about the increase in the debt for just this president’s– first term, about $5 trillion. Is the debt so big that it keeps the economy from breaking through?

SECRETARY TIMOTHY GEITHNER:
No, there’s no evidence and no basis for concern that those– long-term problems about our fiscal sustainability are hurting the economy today. But let me just go back to your statistics, David. The president’s policies in the– the design to put out the financial fires and rescue an economy in– in crisis caused only about 12%, a very small fraction of the increase in debt you’ve seen over this period of time.

The vast bulk of that increase in debt is the result of the policy choices made by his predecessor to finance some very expensive tax cuts by borrowing, to finance two wars by borrowing, and to finance a big expansion of Medicare by borrowing, not by cutting other– other spending or raising taxes.

And those are the– that’s the bulk of the contribution combined with the effects of the crisis. So it’s a slightly misleading figure.

In other words, Romney’s lying again, and getting away with it, because there are very few challenges to his Opposite World tales.

Of course, GW Bush is not the least bit responsible. His two unpaid-for wars and unpaid-for tax cuts for the very wealthy clearly had nothing to do with creating the debt. Nonono, you silly geese, it was Obama’s fault. Blame Obama… for everything… because he is so powerful that he’s also been causing floods, venereal disease, and The Boehner’s bad breath.

Rep. Speier:

“Facts don’t mean anything. That’s what’s so disturbing.”

You know what else is disturbing? This:

Too sweet, but be careful some of the squeals from the audience are pretty high. Via.

This thing is um, special? See, now they claim that PBO is the son of a citizen of the United States, but A COMMUNIST CITIZEN. It’s kinda tawdry in how it deals with Ann, and just pathetic in the rest. Don’t tell Orly.

“Birthers” are flipping their tinfoil hats over a new film that claims President Barack Obama’s father was not a Kenyan goat herder but rather a communist journalist nearly four decades older than his mother. The problem? It undermines a bedrock of birther lore: that the president is ineligible to be commander-in-chief.

“Dreams From My Real Father,” a 97-minute film narrated by an Obama impersonator, weaves the narrative that Obama’s grandfather wasn’t a furniture salesman but an undercover CIA agent who convinced Barack Obama Sr. to marry his teenage daughter to hide the fact that she was impregnated by a 55-year-old communist named Frank Marshall Davis.

The fake Obama narrator sets up the tale as the “the story I would have told if I were being honest with you.” Built through archival black and white footage, the film’s disclaimer states that it includes “re-creations of probable events, using reasoned logic, speculation, and approximated conversations in an attempt to provide a cohesive understanding of Obama’s history.”

Using that disclaimer, the filmmakers assert that Obama had a nose job ahead of his 2004 run for Senate, that his mother posed for naked photos when she was five weeks pregnant with him and that Bill Ayers nurtured Obama’s career.

Not a landslide, but def better than it was.

WASHINGTON - — U.S. builders began work on more homes last month, evidence that the battered housing market is slowly healing.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that builders broke ground at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717,000 homes in April from March. That’s 2.6 percent more than March’s total, which was revised higher. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments.

Building permits, a gauge of future construction, fell last month from a 3 1/2 year high to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 715,000. But that was because of a 23 percent drop in the volatile apartment category. Permits for single-family homes rose almost 2 percent.

Even with the gains, the rate of construction and the level of permits requested remain roughly half the pace considered healthy. But the increase, along with rising builder confidence and stronger job growth, is a hopeful sign that the home market may finally be starting to recover nearly five years after the housing bubble burst.

He was brilliant last night on Lawrence!! Via.

Lol, via.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

My dad grew incredible roses, and every season would pick the most perfect one for my mom and put in a pickle jar in the middle of the kitchen table. A Pollack’s version of romance. My mom loved it.

Video- Dan Pink’s travel tips

Scientists are developing an ‘electronic nose’ app for smart phones

Report: female farmworkers suffer sex abuse

Video- Russian soft-drinks explained: tastes like forests, rye bread, licorice, bubblegum

New exhibition at the V&A to chart the glitz and glamour of formal gowns over the decades

3D printed chess set whose pieces form a “Chess Giant”

Traditional English flower makes a comeback after gardeners fall out of love with exotic blooms

Carlos Fuentes, eminent Mexican writer, dies at 83

Rewired nerves allow paralysed man to use hand

Video- Animated Russian “Winnie the Pooh” from 1972 is quite the Nietzschean bummer

Women with supportive families are not pressurised by ‘thin and beautiful’ ideal

Younger Cuban-American voters shift away from the GOP and toward an independent outlook

Hilarious pictures of the pets who just couldn’t keep out of the picture

GOP shoots down civil unions in Colorado

Earliest ever limestone carvings dating back 37,000 years believed to depict female private parts (if you have a vivid imagination)

How to: Make a unicorn

Kodak’s New York HQ housed secret underground nuclear reactor

Senators see ballooning national crisis: helium shortage

Via.

In Journey of Jesus, players search for articles and artifacts as they explore a colorful, cartoony version of biblical Israel. The company plans to release new chapters, “ideas and information and challenges” each week in order to hold player interest. This game is similar to Lightside’s Journey of Moses, an ancient Egyptian adventure that attracts 70,000 monthly users, according to Facebook; Lightside says Moses has drawn over two million players since lauching last summer.

Um yeah, I’m sorry. Via.

Published on May 15, 2012 by mittromney:

Today, in the Obama economy, twenty-three million Americans are out of work, underemployed, or have stopped looking for work. …

…Or have done jail time. Jason Clausen, an Iowa man who appears in the above video, “has a lengthy rap sheet and served ten days in jail for ‘assault on a peace officer,’” according to Politico:

The records show Clausen had nearly 20 busts, tickets or fines, a number of them traffic infractions related to things like driving while intoxicated, or with a suspended license. Some were related to accidents, others to driving without seat belts.

He’s the one who says, ” “When the economy went bad a month after my divorce, I lost my job, I lost my house.”

Another Moment of Chagrin brought to you by Team Willard.